Aug 26, 2020
"Yeah. Ya gotta be NUTS, too. And you're gonna need a crew as nuts as you are! Who do ya got in mind?
-⠀Reuben Tishkoff, Ocean's 11
What's the best part of a heist movie? Easy. It's the "Oh, SHIT!" moment near the end. It's where the heroes explain their plan, and everything snaps into place. It's where the little slip-ups along the way turn out to be just part of it all along.
Great Pretender delivers that in spades. And all the other parts of a banging heist movie are there. The slick sexuality? Check. The seductive scenery? Check. The sinuous, slithery, cast? Check. The
...
snappy dialogue? You got it. Let's give each of those a little bit of a closer look, then. Not too close, though. They might turn out to be counterfeit.
>Plot
Great Pretender, as I mentioned before, is in the tradition of the best heist movies. And that means that it follows what is basically a very well-worked formula. One, the gang meet (with protestations from some members that they don't want to tag along (Chiaki Kobayashi as a not-quite innocent Makoto Edamura, clearly at least a little similar to Matt Damon's character in Ocean's 11)). The experienced gangster is there (Junichi Suwabe turning in a swaggering performance as Laurent Thierry), along with his mysterious woman (Natsumi Fujiwara bringing erotic and electric ife to my favourite character design of the year). Two, they make a plan. Three, they execute the plan. Four, the plan seems to go awry. Five, the plan's revealed. In between, to grease the palms of the narrative, there's snappy banter and some wonderful background work.
Great Pretender is wonderful on this count, always with its tongue firmly rammed into its cheek (one particularly excellent scene in the first clutch of episodes references The Untouchables and then has a character lampshade that reference).
>Animation, Background, Style
I'd go so far as to say that style makes the series, though. There's three components. One, the characters. Two, the backgrounds. Three, the animation.
First, the characters. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto turns in an excellent and varied set of character designs which evoke the slightly ratty but always absolutely self-assured protagonists of almost every heist movie you've ever watched, which are then brought into immaculately caricatured life by the script that never hesitates to put a quip, a joke, or a put-down into their mouths. Is there an internal life? Who cares when it's this much fun!
Second, the neon backgrounds contribute to the slick production values -- but it's not all play and no work, because there's some really seriously good stylisation work going on (keep an eye out for the minimalist cityscapes. The eye assault is never overwhelming and, weirdly, even though the saturation is always cranked right up, Great Pretender never feels eyesoreish or ugly. It's always strangely tasteful on its own terms.
Finally, WIT studio turns its hand from complex fight scenes (AoT, VINLAND SAGA) to character animation, and the characters practically teem with life. Every movement just feels so careful and weighty but also light and practically flippant. There's a serious sense of style to the cutting and editing too (special mentions to the smash cut to the title card at the end of the first episode hooking me right in), with every cut feeling absolutely necessary. Even under the voice-over narration there's some excellent pastel work and some really crunchy-feeling cutting.
>Music
Yutaka Yamada delivers again with a soundtrack which evokes the best heist movies, zipping the plot along on a Prosecco-bubble wave of joy. Sound design and soundscapes are never any less than nearly right-on, and I didn't notice any major missteps.
The OP and ED tunes are both strong, with WIT splashing out for the Freddie Mercury song the show ""borrows"" its title from.
>Final Thoughts
Great Pretender is really very good. I've been comprehensively seduced by its vision of a neon nineties (make no mistake, that's where this series is stuck, and no, I don't care that Breaking Bad and Harry Potter get name-dropped).
But is it great? No matter its stabs at it, it can never really quite get beyond caricature. And that works fine for adding emotional weight to characters, so they're not just cutouts and such that you care about them enough to give _some_ stakes to the heists. But it doesn't make it anything more than that.
You know what, though? I'm OK with that. I don't expect heist movies to be great art. I don't expect Heat, or The Sting, or Ocean's 11 to deliver a life-changing, cathartic experience. I just want them to be like freebasing pure, unadulterated fun. And Great Pretender is fun. God, yes. It is fun.
I want more.
>Adrift in a world of my own (ooh ooh)
____
If you made it to the end, thanks for reading! What did you think? Think I'm an idiot? Completely wrong? Completely right? Voice of my generation? Message me. I'd love to talk.
- Pointy
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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